Electronic devices, including portable electronic devices, have gained widespread use and may provide a variety of functions including, for example, telephonic, electronic messaging and other personal information manager (PIM) application functions. Portable electronic devices include portable wireless communication devices including several types of mobile stations such as simple cellular telephones, so-called smart telephones, wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers with wireless 802.11 or Bluetooth capabilities.
Many portable communications devices are capable of receiving an incoming call. The device typically announces the incoming call using one or more of an audible alert, a visual alert, a haptic alert, and so forth. The user can typically answer the call by pressing a button or taking some other action that instructs the device in these regards. If the user takes no action whatsoever, the corresponding communications infrastructure will typically eventually terminate the connection attempt and sometimes provide the calling party with an opportunity to record a voice message that the called party can listen to later when convenient.
Notwithstanding the considerable ability of many persons to successfully multitask their activities, the foregoing approaches are not necessarily sufficient to meet all possible needs of all possible users in all possible application settings.
Improvements in two-way wireless communications devices are desirable.